Dear Little Day

 We are sincerely hoping this day is holding rain. We have had only a few drops since the seeds went into the ground!

Dear little day, just beginning

What do you hold in your hands?

Will it be flowers or sorrow

Spilling their tears on time’s sands?

Dear little day barely breathing

Artist of bustle and rush

What are the colors bequeathing

Memories poised on your brush

Dear little day never witnessed

Or handled or held before

What are the pictures you’ll scatter

At dusk, on living room’s floor

Dear little day, soft you offer

‘never-again’ charges to keep

For when you slip from Time’s favor

You will not wake from your sleep

© Janet Martin

A Poem in the Making

Sometimes, to set words in order

…to arrange them in the thought

That aches to break free from head-quarters

I cannot

Sometimes thought is like a shadow

Something that we cannot grasp

An elusive sort of vexing shaped by present,

Future, past

Sometimes words seem to evade me

In the quest to spell thought’s howls

They rebel against the ink of consonants

And vowels

Sometimes, to corral a message

In the borders of a poem

Is like capturing wild horses with the brandishing

Of broom

Sometimes, words attempt but will not

Sit quite still enough to stay

Where a poem in the making

Slips away

© Janet Martin 

Do you find that sometimes the thought on the tip of formation refuses, choosing to remain a sense rather than a sentence?

Where Apple Trees Are Blooming...

The cannons cease and the darkness falls,

And those fluttering things are men. Edgar A. Guest

Phoenix Rising invites us to use another poets words to inspire our own. 

 

The orchard is a palace where the apple trees are blooming
Nature fulfills promises that only spring can keep
Cold autumnal deathbeds after winter's icy grooming
Spawns a metamorphosis where fields of flowers sleep

I stroll the early morning where the lilacs are adorning
Twigs that seemed but lifeless sprigs before awakening
Our oohs and aahs and the applause of tongue-tied beggar-barons
Contentment's luxury is free and not a purchased Thing

...And I can't help but think of those who fled with almost nothing
Save the clothes upon their backs and children in their arms
Never mind that skies are kind and apple trees are blooming
Evil has no season;bent on ugliness that harms

Here among the song of birds and freedom bought with bodies
Hope is juxtaposed like spring, with suffering and death 
And mingled with the virgin hues of greens and blues, gold, purple
Runs the blood of fallen comrades yielding their last breath

The cannons cease and the darkness falls and those fluttering things are men
And boys and girls that will not see another spring again

Janet~

Lest We Forget...

Easy Service

When an empty sleeve or a sightless eye

Or a legless form I see,

I breathe my thanks to my God on High

For His watchful care o'er me.

And I say to myself, as the cripple goes

Half stumbling on his way:

I may brag and boast, but that brother knows

Why the old flag floats to-day.

I think as I sit in my cozy den

Puffing one of my many pipes

That I've served with all of my fellow men

The glorious Stars and Stripes.

Then I see a troop in the faded blue

And a few in the dusty gray,

And I have to laugh at the deeds I do

For the flag that floats to-day.

I see men tangled in pointed wire,

The sport of the blazing sun,

Mangled and maimed by a leaden fire

As the tides of battle run,

And I fancy I hear their piteous calls

For merciful death, and then

The cannons cease and the darkness falls,

And those fluttering things are men.

Out there in the night they beg for death,

Yet the Reaper spurns their cries,

And it seems his jest to leave them breath

For their pitiful pleas and sighs.

And I am here in my cosy room

In touch with the joys of life,

I am miles away from the fields of doom

And the gory scenes of strife.

I never have vainly called for aid,

Nor suffered real pangs of thirst,

I have marched with life in its best parade

And never have seen its worst.

In the flowers of ease I have ever basked,

And I think as the Flag I see

How much of service from some it's asked,

How little of toil from me.

Edgar Albert Guest :

Daylight Slips Where Air Eclipses Time's Ellipses...

Daylight slips where air eclipses Time’s ellipses ethereal

Sky-lines etched like charcoal sketches stretch blue shadows long until

Darkness covers loners, lovers; morrow hovers soft, aloft

Where the charter of an hour never barters with the clock

Midnight’s morrow with its sorrow none can borrow of its ilk

Dew and dust anoints the Must that God appoints to us; Time’s silk

Like an ocean in slow-motion washes over twilight’s world

Daylight slips, darkness eclipses the ellipses dawn unfurled

Morning offers merchants, scoffers, beggars, coffers fresh, unfilled

In the quiet echoes riot where the dark of night has stilled

Tussles with the hustle-bustle rubric of Time’s gossamer

Daylight slips where the eclipse of past, present and future blur

© Janet Martin

'May' Poets

Sometimes I leave a poem out

To share with them

They grunt a response

To let me know

They read it

…sort of

Then ask

‘What’s for supper?’

Sometimes I point out

The shapes of leaves

New born, etched

On May’s dusk

They nod and

Continue discussing

That

‘Really good song by so-and-so’

Sometimes they make

My heart stop

Right there

In the middle

Of Ordinary

As they say, ‘look Mom,

Look at the way the sun hits those trees,

Isn’t it cool?’

© Janet Martin